ADOPTED

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

In love, He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will—to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves.

Ephesians 1:4b-6

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

I was blessed with a relatively normal childhood, born to two parents who cherished me from the moment I emerged into this big world from my mother’s womb. My father and mother ensured I was taken care of, sacrificing to meet the needs of myself and the four siblings that followed. We were never wealthy but our family was rich in love and I am always grateful for that.

As I grew into adulthood and experienced the world on a more personal level, traveling outside of the United States to other nations, one difficult truth became painfully evident.

Not every child gets to experience what I got to.

Look at the statistics today and it’s harrowing. Per UNICEF (the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund), there are more than 100 million orphans in the world today. To put this into perspective, this is more than the entire national population of Turkey or Germany. If that doesn’t trouble you deeply, I don’t think you have a heart.

There is a world of children in need of someone who will care for them, people who are willing to adopt and love a child who is biologically not their own. Without this, millions of children live without hope, feeling abandoned and unvalued.

And just in case you might think this isn’t your problem, the scriptures say otherwise:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress. James 1:27

This tells us that children have been orphaned for as long as a man and woman were able to conceive and bear offspring. The call was to look after orphans more than 2,000 years ago and it’s still the call today, one we can’t escape or afford to ignore.

Need a good reason to stop looking the other way and do whatever you can to look after the orphans of the world?

Keep in mind that you were a spiritual orphan at one time. We all were and some people are still orphaned as I write this because they have chosen to not believe in Jesus as Savior, the prerequisite to adoption by God the Father. Look at these words as we continue to study from the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:

In love, He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will—to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves. Ephesians 1:4b-6

Here we find that God predestines every single child He brings into His creation for adoption out of the deep love He has for us. In other words, no one is marked ineligible for adoption. Everyone has a chance to be a part of the family of God. This was the pleasure and will of our Lord.

So what is the pathway to adoption?

You don’t have to go through some worldly agency to find it. Rather, all you need to do is believe and trust in Jesus, God’s one and only Son who was freely given up to save a world full of lost sinners destined for destruction. Through Christ, anyone can find sonship and become a co-heir to the very kingdom of Heaven (Romans 8:17). They are spiritually orphaned no more.

Given this, one question emerges:

Have you found your way to adoption by God, an adoption that will last for all eternity?

Believe in Jesus as Savior and you will gain it.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com